NEW DELHI, July 14: India’s top security officials meet this week to discuss latest intelligence that Maoist rebels are encircling urban areas, upgrading their weapons and mounting frontal attacks on security forces.

While expanding their influence in the countryside, Maoist rebels are spreading to cities, including the capital New Delhi, through a web of front organisations to boost their network, police said.

Indian Maoists say they are fighting for the rights of the poor and landless, an insurgency that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as India’s biggest internal security threat.

The rebels have at least 22,000 combatants, armed with light machine guns, automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Some of the weapons are made in secret factories, officials say.

Security analysts say the rebels, who have a presence in at least 13 of India’s 29 states, are consolidating in rural belts outside big cities and towns and building buffer zones.

“Their whole philosophy is to start from villages and move towards cities,” B.K. Ponwar, head of a top counter-insurgency and jungle warfare school, told Reuters.

“The red corridor is expanding and their influence is growing and not reducing at all,” he said, referring to a huge swathe of mineral-rich areas controlled by the rebels.

The police chiefs of several Maoist-hit states and senior government officials will meet on Wednesday to discuss rebel attacks and review their strategy, a home ministry official said.

The rebels stumped security experts last month when they attacked a highly trained counter-insurgency squad in the eastern state of Orissa with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades, a far cry from the archaic .303 rifle and locally made pistols they had used previously.

HITTING THE ECONOMY: The Maoists regularly use landmines and grenades to attack vehicles of security forces, power lines, government buildings, rail lines and factories, aiming to cripple economic activity over a large area.

“The Maoists have drafted a detailed and coherent strategy for their work in urban areas,” Ajai Sahni of New Delhi’s Institute for Conflict Management said.

“They are first building frontal organisations and simultaneously plan to create armed squads to back up this increasing militant political activity.”

Yet, India’s response to the threat has lacked the enthusiasm shown in tackling militancy in the disputed northern region of Kashmir and the northeast, experts say.

“What we really need is a long-term, well-thought-out strategy,” C. Uday Bhaskar, former director of New Delhi’s Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses said.

“The situation is very disturbing and more serious than we perceived.”—Reuters